Nighttide
by Lionus
Summary: Their nighttime rituals became a matter of course somewhere between complete exhaustion and shrugging off superficial wounds that didn't need to be treated right away.


**Disclaimer: **I do not own Fairy Tail.

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><p>When missions ran long and he couldn't make the trek to his own house- flat out refusing to leave her to make it up to her apartment and not trusting himself to make the distance to his own without falling into a ditch or accidentally breaking into someone else's house he mistook as his- he stayed.<p>

It had happened once, Lucy had spent an hour trying to find her apartment before giving up and passing out on Fairy Hills' front stoop and he was chased out of a baker's home with the mean end of the baker's wife's broom. The bad experiences left them to each other, where they shuffled together in a weird, not-quite tandem. She'd hiss with every footfall she felt like was one step too many and he'd groan when her elbow brushed the large bruise blooming over his ribs.

Natsu breathed deep through his nose and exhaled slowly through his mouth, offering the celestial mage a smile that was a fraction of his usual grin. "Almost there, just hang on, Luce."

The celestial mage rolled her head back, leaning a little more of her weight on him. Absentmindedly, her tired eyes followed the twinkling constellations as she whined. "What if I can't make it, Natsu? What if my legs just _give out_ from under me right here? Would you leave me on the steps?" She shook her head and attempted a wry chuckle. "You'd probably give up too and just let us fall into the river."

His responding chuckle was slow and short, not boisterous like it was all other hours of the day. "Nah, I'd get ya up to your bed somehow and I'm not about to doze off in the river. Sleeping with the fishes is Happy's dream."

If she had it in her, she would have laughed, doubling over with the image of the blue Exceed blissfully snoring amongst the trout and bass, sleepily reaching out for a pufferfish and cuddling it by accident. Instead, she managed a humored hum and shifted her head to his shoulder. Lucy's hand untangled from its fisted deadlock in his coat and brushed across the hairline at the nape of his neck. "How you have not swept a girl off her feet yet is beyond me."

But he already had and they both knew it.

"Where'd that come from, ya weirdo?" He snorted and gently brushed her hair away from where it tickled his chin.

"You're kind of funny, girls like it when someone can make them laugh."

"Wasn't it you that said- not 10 hours ago- that I couldn't get a girl to laugh at one of my stupid jokes even if her life depended on it?" Natsu angled his head to catch a glimpse of her reaction, settling for smiling into the crown of her head when he couldn't see past her bangs.

"You have your moments. We'll find you a girl yet."

Natsu made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat and readjusted his hold on her, heavily eyeing the stairs in front of them like they were the actual enemy of the day.

By some grand miracle, they made it up to her door without rolling back down the stairs in a zombie heap. If they had, there would have been no retries; too tired to move once they were done, they would have just slept in a pile on the floor.

Natsu pilfered through her key pouch, his hand brushing over her bare waist in his fumbling. "Ah, sorry. Wasn't tryin' to-"

"Just unlock the door, casanova." The celestial mage was thankful for how lucky she was to have someone with such an enduring strength and the grace to not leave her zombie ass halfway up the flight of stairs because he didn't want to bare the full brunt of their combined weight. He had been one move away from piggybacking her all the way home and she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Even when that same gift horse unintentionally left a brand on her waist from his internal heat and a trail of goose flesh to spring up on her exposed midriff.

Her door swung open and the glorious promise of her big comfy chair had her legs wavering for a second. Before Natsu caught her with both arms around her waist, Lucy dipped forward and stared transfixed at their feet, dimly noting that Natsu needed new sandals. She wondered if anywhere had them discounted or if he went to a shoemaker.

It was funny to her, the ones only barely strapped to his heels looked more beaten than they were.

The fire dragon slayer eyed her oddly as she giggled to herself and he led her to the love seat in the living room. "You're somethin' else, Luce." He shook his head at her as she flopped down on the cushion and bent to extract her from the boots she now regretted with every fiber of her aching feet and stiff calves.

"'m looking into a different pair of shoes first thing tomorrow. These are torture."

Natsu scoffed, "Yeah, but the roundhouse you somehow managed on that one guy was pretty great. If you had different shoes, it probably would have flown right off your foot the second you tried to do kick someone like that again. Besides, with your luck, the shoe would probably sling off to either hit you in your own face or knock me out."

Lucy swiped for his head, barely missing when he ducked and lost his balance- causing him to tip forward and bump his nose against her knee. She bent over, clutching his hair as they lost themselves to a hysterical fit. He stayed, resting his forehead against her knee and shaking with mirth. It was then she realized they had both officially lost it and that even getting in the front door was a big deal for them in this state.

"Ugh, Natsu….my boots."

He cleared his throat, only to delve back into throaty chuckles as he righted himself. "Right, yeah. I got this."

Absently, she smoothed his hair back from his face. "I seriously doubt that."

But it was easy practice for the boy at her feet. Seamlessly, he pulled down the zipper on the side, cradled his warm and weathered palm under the crook of her knee to wriggle the boot down, tossed said boot to the side, rolled his palm and fingers over her sore arch, and then, repeat.

There was an unyielding patience that she could just catch a glimpse of past his scarf, tucked in the shadowed curve of his neck.

Unbidden, her hand snatched in the folds of the scarf and Lucy carefully unwound the cloth, setting it at her side after she ghosted her own fingers over the old scar near his throat. It took him a minute to gather his strength, but he cocked his head up to her with a tired smile of appreciation mixed with the faint trace of childhood dimples. He wrapped his hands around her wrists, easing her up from the chair. She pushed the dirty and tattered coat from his shoulders, letting it fall to the floor and not caring that they were slowly leaving a suggestive trail of garments in their wake.

Lucy was too tired to overthink the matter of her bare feet and Natsu's chest. Especially when the only person that had anything remotely close to permission for being in her house in the middle of the night was currently- comically- fumbling with his belt buckle less than a foot away.

Natsu cursed and the tell-tale red glow illuminated off both of their torsos and cast warm shadows on their faces.

"Idiot, don't do that." Lucy knocked his wrist away- careful not to get near the palm and fingertips that still burned with fire just under the surface. She had made that mistake twice before in the beginning of their formed routine.

Second nature clicked in and Natsu huffed, relieved, when she had gotten victory over the accursed leather that no doubt had it out for him. He tapped the large buckle on her waist and murmured, "Your turn."

Quickly, before either of them could weigh the connotations of mutual belt unbuckling- the ends of her belt stuck out in the air just like his. They had to have looked utterly ridiculous and a lot more scandalous.

"Up." He bumped her elbow with a hand and cradled the soft skin of her underarm as he rolled the arm sleeves down her forearms and wrist to where she could flick her arm back to send the material into the wall behind them.

A muffled _thump_ punctuated her readiness to be done and in bed.

The dragon slayer chuckled, light and youthful, as he shook his head. "You _always_ do that."

She tossed the other arm sleeve after he was done and grumbled, "Too much clothing for this."

The dragon slayer rolled his eyes and tugged on a ponytail that hung lopsidedly by her ear. "Most would say it's the opposite, Luce."

Lucy shucked her vest into the pile with her sleeves and swatted at his middle, relishing in the '_ow'_ that mixed with his sleepy laughter. "You know what I mean."

Natsu yawned widely and absently scratched at his chest. "'m barely lucid, so not likely."

She linked her arm with his and began their delirious shuffle to her room. "Lucid?"

"Growing up with Levy, a few vocabulary lessons rub off from time to time. And it's on your Word-of-the-Day calendar." Without being told, Natsu slipped from her side to make his way to her dresser, fishing through the top drawer for her pajama pants.

"Didn't know you cared enough to listen, let alone pay attention." The celestial mage blinked and smiled a little. He must have been completely out of it to have been pilfering through her delicates without offering his usual, smart-mouthed commentary on her clothing choices.

"It's been known to happen." He smirked and came back, pressing his hand to her shoulder to guide her to sit on the bed. Quietly and with an amount of focus that almost had her in hysterics, he got her feet into the leg holes of her pajamas. He rolled the material up to her thighs and then, let his hands drop to the edge of bed, bracing himself as she balanced with one hand on his shoulder and stood to finish the process of putting on the pants under her skirt. His face stayed adamantly turned to the side, taking in every detail of her cluttered desk and not his partner. Lucy shimmied the skirt down her legs and gladly kicked the material off her ankle into a corner of her room.

The blonde came dangerously close to kicking Natsu in his kneecap and chin as she did so. The dragon slayer yelped as he leaned back and blinked, trying to process his life passing before his eyes. "You're going to land me in the hospital at this rate, Heartfilia."

She groaned and flopped back on her bed. "Don't jinx it, 'm too tired to help you get there."

"Are you saying you'd just leave me bleeding on your floor?"

"Yep." Her eyes stared warily on her ceiling, counting his shuffling footsteps back to her chest of drawers.

"Cruel, Luce." His footsteps came back and his battle swept hair stuck out hilariously in her peripherals. "Now…Reach for the sky."

Lucy sighed on her giggle and raised up as she was told. Every time- _every time_- he said it and she wondered if it would ever get old. What it might mean that it actually hadn't and that she enjoyed the corny joke.

Exhausted arms stretched over her head before she gave up part of the way and let them fall to her sides. She slumped forward, trying not to think on all the underlying implications as she so easily allowed his diligent fingers to unhook and unzip her top. As reliable as his jokes, the nervous clearing of his throat had her sitting back up with a hand pressing the clothing to her front. His eyes were just as diligently trained on her ceiling- she wondered if he could map the same constellations she saw there- and held out a shirt that once belonged to him but smelled too much like her to be called so anymore.

Somewhere between cool fabric settling over her shoulders and yanking the blasted hair ties from her tangled hair, he had searched out his own pair of pajama pants and a shirt- leaving the white pants with belt still carelessly looped in, on top of her dirty clothes hamper.

It was odd.

At that moment, if someone asked her what her name was, she probably couldn't have told them.

But if they asked what his ivory trousers looked like spilling halfway over the lip of wicker and mixing comfortably with the other contents that were solely hers- she could tell them with certainty it looked like routine.

Familiar like her middle name.

Safe like home.

"Scoot." With one knee settled on the mattress, he reached out and plucked her from her dazed spot, unintentionally curling her consciously around the small flicker of heat that constantly sizzled under his skin and seeped into her bones.

This part was her favorite- heavily reliant on the fact that it took only seconds, only a few breaths between her and sleep, but mostly because it allowed her to be still when he was being still.

Cautiously, he slipped his hands through her hair, prying the knots out and massaging her scalp to ease away any particular harsh yank's hurt.

Lucy counted his heartbeats in answer to hers and the laugh lines relaxingly dipped at the corners of his eyes as she held him close.

His fingertips trailed and jumped over her back. "_Man_, I'm exhausted."

All she could do was shake her head. The line as repeated as his bad jokes and bashful propriety and just as glaringly obvious. "Sleep, now."

As she drifted further from awake and closer to the sleepy lull of warmth and starry dreams, Lucy felt him shift beside her. Antsy and quick in hopes she wouldn't notice and tell him to keep still. He curled around her, as much as he dared since the celestial mage was notorious about her personal space. It didn't matter now, it was the middle of the night and they had won the good fight for another day. So, she turned to him, throwing an arm over his side and snatching in his t-shirt.

He chuckled one last time and tucked his head into the crook of her neck, breathing deeply. "Yeah…Night, Luce."

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><p><strong>AN: **I just really like writing fics with basically no plot for these two. They're always caught up in something and I'm forever hooked on them being able to mutually unwind together and make corny jokes while they do it. And yeah, Natsu has his pervy side for comic relief and all that jazz, but give me bashful gentleman or give me death.

Originally posted to tumblr, added a little sprucing for here.

Can be seen as a prequel to _Golden_.


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